


Story Stayed the Same

by yekoc



Series: The Place of that Desire [2]
Category: Olympics RPF, Swimming RPF
Genre: Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 16:13:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yekoc/pseuds/yekoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Anyway," says Cash, "I had 'prophylactic' in my last bee, so I know it's not a winged dinosaur."</p><p>"Really? In an eighth grade spelling contest?" Michael asks, then sighs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Story Stayed the Same

Michael had always imagined that his and Ryan's conversation with Cash about the facts of life would happen as the result of some kind of traumatizing discovery or interaction that he doesn't want to spent too much time specifying. One of those forgetting to knock things, because Ryan _always_ forgets to knock, or Cash volunteering to do his own laundry in a suspicious way. That's what happened when Michael was 13, anyway. His mom waited until he'd gotten bleach stains on every set of sheets they owned and then she sat him down and had The Conversation.

That's not what happens with his own son, though. No, instead of laundry or doors or anything else Michael's been dreading, all it is is Cash coming home with a note from school. 

_Once a week Sexual Education begins in March_ , the note reads. 

_Good_ , Michael thinks, that’s taken care of then--but before he can sign it and hand it back to Cash, Ryan’s grabbing it out of his hands and spluttering.

“I just think, like, it’s in a dad’s responsibility to teach his son the girls and the bees,” Ryan says.

“Ah,” says Michael diplomatically.

“Whyyyyyyyy,” says Cash. “Eww, dad.”

“Don’t whine, dude,” Michael says, on auto-pilot. Ryan has his stubborn face on, and there’s no way this will go well, but -- maybe he does have a point. Who knows what kind of abstinence-only stuff they trot out in the Florida public school system, and it’s not like Ryan’s gonna shame Cash about anything. 

“Listen to your dad,” he says, holding the note out of Cash’s desperate reach, “and then you get this and you can sit in the back of the class and laugh with Taylor every time the teacher says ‘condom,’ or whatever.”

He watches as Ryan leads a desperately eye-rolling Cash into his bedroom, then decides to let himself be a horrible person for a minute or two and listen at the door. That’s about as long as the talk lasts, it turns out. 

Michael retreats before the door opens, tries to act like he’s been busy in the kitchen the whole time, but when Ryan tiptoes in red-faced he just can’t help himself.

"Oh man," says Michael, "I can't believe I wasn’t in there, phone in hand. That shit deserved to be recorded for all time; I wanna give it to Cash's friends to play at his bachelor party, dude."

Ryan still looks a little glazed-eyed and traumatized, but he shoots Michael a pretty adequate glare. "I didn't see you in there trying to talk to him about shit, yo!"

"That's because you were so excited to do it yourself. Dude. Did I hear right? Did you actually say "gentile" instead of "genital"? Just call it a dick, Ryan, you _have_ one."

"That’s because you have to teach kids, like, the correct words for shit. Or they won't… respect bodies and stuff. You read that one in the book too, man, come on," Ryan says, flushing a little. 

" _I_ don't even know what the fuck a prophylactic is exactly, Ryan, but it's not the same as a pterodactyl, and come on, Cash knows what a condom is, he's a 13 year old kid—" 

"Whatever," Ryan says, "You talk to him next time, fine. I'm walking the dog," and then he's down the hallway and gone.

Ryan walks the dog for an impressive two and a half hours, enough time for Cash to emerge, still looking half-mortified, from his room and start rummaging in the pantry.

When he sees Michael he freezes, a little wary.

"I'm not gonna bring it up," Michael says after a second or two, and Cash shrugs and goes back to pawing through the shelves.

"Whatever," says Cash, emerging with a value-sized jar of pickles and a bag of mini Snickers. Michael feels his stomach clench in sympathetic revolt. 

Cash bites off half a pickle and stuffs a mini Snickers into the center of the remaining half. 

"Snot like I dunno that stuff 'ready," he says.

"Don't talk with your mouth full, close your mouth when you chew, don't tell me that," Michael says, automatically. Cash shrugs, still chewing loudly.

"Dude, you're gonna have to pretend you don't, even if you do," Michael tries again, unwrapping a Snickers and trying to ignore the looming presence of the pickles. "Plus, you think you know it all, but you really don't. Trust me."

"Ew," says Cash, "Gross. Are there more pickles?"

"Your definition of "gross" needs a little work, C-man," Michael says, but he finds the pickles in the back of the fridge anyway. 

"You're gross," says Cash automatically, and Michael tugs at a handful of his too-long blond curls in retaliation. Cash scrunches up his nose and rolls his eyes and stays right there, eating his pickles and Snickers. 

"Anyway," says Cash, "I had 'prophylactic' in my last bee, so I know it's not a winged dinosaur."

"Really? In an eighth grade spelling contest?" Michael asks, then sighs. 

"Anyway, maybe his word choice was a little less than ideal, but your dad's doing this 'cause it's important, and it kinda is, so when he tries again tomorrow, or whatever, listen to the guy." 

Also, I'm an idiot, Michael doesn't add, just confiscates the pickles and Snickers and throws some hamburger meat in a frying man. Ryan's been talking about tacos, lately.

He's just opening the grated cheese when Ryan comes in and settles on the couch next to Cash. 

"You're off the hook for tonight," Michael hears Ryan say, "but this isn't over, C-man," and something from Cash he can't hear, and the sound of wrestling and laughter. He doesn't grin into the taco meat, but maybe he thinks about it.

Dinner is sloppy and messy and delicious, and the dog grabs half a taco out of Cash's hand when he gestures too wildly with it, and at the end of it Ryan's laughing so hard he drops another taco and the dog gets that one, too. 

It's Cash's night to clear and do the dishes, and Michael corners Ryan in the hallway, out of earshot of the kitchen.

"Hey," he says, "I was a dick," and kisses him. Ryan pushes into it, into Michael, for a second or two, and then he pulls away.

"It kinda felt like being interviewed," he says, shaking his head. "Like, I dunno, but like, the most important interview but also the worst, so, yeah. Fuck." 

"At least the kid's a pretty solid little dude," Michael says. "I think he'll survive a few more years of parental trauma with no lasting damage. You should talk to him again, in a little bit. Maybe try not to sound like you've only encountered human sexuality in textbooks badly translated from Russian, though."

"Are you—" Ryan pauses. "Dickhead," he says, and kisses Michael hard. 

There's a terrifying crash from the kitchen, and they both spring apart. Before Michael can run in and assess the damage, though, Ryan grabs him by the shirt and pulls him forward.

"I'll show you textbook later, if you wanna see textbook, asshole," he says, low and dirty and laughing, and ducks into the kitchen before Michael can get his breath back.

Thirteen years ago, Michael would have chased him down and pinned Ryan against the counter. This time all he can do is take a few deep breaths, walk in, and help Ryan and Cash pick shards of glass off the floor.

"Just one this time?" he asks, and Cash mutters, "three."

"There goes your football career, bud," Ryan says, pulling an exaggerated frown, and Michael joins in.

"My hopes and dreams of raising the next Ravens receiver, man, smashed to pieces," he says, and Cash falls for it and protests that he doesn't even _play_ football, who do they think they've been driving to the pool every morning?

"Your kid's kinda easy to fool, dude," Ryan says to Michael, and Michael pulls a serious face and looks at Cash.

"It's sad that your father still doesn't understand genetics," he says, and when Ryan shouts, "You were the one, like, caregiving him while I swam during his formationative years, man! Nature or nuture?" from the corner, Michael's laughing too hard to correct him.

They get the kitchen clean and do flashcards for half an hour and watch while Cash works painstakingly on a class project that seems to involve twenty gluesticks and half the living room floor, and then Michael walks the dog and comes back to find Ryan trying not to laugh out loud at an episode of the Simpsons, Cash half-asleep against his shoulder.

"Eleven already? Damn," says Michael, and together they wake Cash up and send him to bed over the unconvincing sound of his half-yawned, "But I'm not tired, c'mon, Jake doesn't have to go to bed till _midnight_ , he tol' me so—"

"If Jake, like, turned into a zombie cause he never slept and stuff, would you jump off a cliff with him?" asks Ryan, which stops Cash's complaints pretty effectively. 

"Pretty sure zombies can't jump," says Michael when Ryan gets back from trailing Cash upstairs and making sure he doesn't turn the light on in his room. 

"What kind of boring-ass zombie moves have you been watching, dude?" Ryan asks, genuinely worried, and Michael steps on three gluesticks trying to get to the doorway so he can kiss him long and deep, Ryan's body warm and solidly familiar against his. 

"I think you said something about a textbook, earlier," he says, and Ryan looks from him to the half-dried gluesticks and shards of brightly colored construction paper embedded into the living room carpet and says "Fuck it," pushes Michael into their bedroom and closes the door.

Michael's on him in a second, kissing him hard and messy the way he'd wanted to earlier, backing him up against the wall and going for his jeans without much preamble, when Ryan laughs and pulls away.

"Hold up," Ryan says, then starts singing, "I know that you want me, but tonight I'm fucking youuu—"

"Shut up, Jesus," says Michael, trying not to laugh, "it's bad enough when you stick to rap as a seduction tactic, but your voice, dude, was that even in a real key of any kind?"

"Let's remove the space between me and youuu," Ryan croons tunelessly, coming up behind Michael and rolling his hips slowly, lowering his hands to bracket Michael's waist and hold him there, move them both to the beat of his criminally bad singing. 

"Damn I like the way that you move, so give it to me," Ryan goes on, merciless over the sound of Michael's laughter, and Michael cranes around to shut him up with a biting kiss. 

"For real though," Ryan says when Michael finally pulls away, "I wanna, if that's cool."

"Yeah," says Michael, "duh, anything, just for the love of god stop singing," and Ryan sticks his tongue out but Michael kisses him anyways.

"All I was asking for, dude," Ryan says, finally, and hands Michael the lube.

Ryan likes Michael's fingers a lot—in his own ass, definitely, and in Michael's ass too, and usually they do it this way, Ryan watching while Michael opens himself up carefully, effectively. 

It's like that tonight, too, except this time Ryan won't stop telling Michael what to do—another finger, slower, faster, more lube. 

"Jesus, why don’t you just write a list," Michael mutters, biting his lip over the feeling of a third finger, and behind him Ryan laughs a little.

"Because tonight I'm fucking you," he half-sings, and if it didn't all feel so good Michael might try to figure out a way to free up a hand to shoot Ryan the finger.

It's like that later, too, when Ryan pushes in slowly and fucks Michael just as slow, taking his time with it instead of letting Michael set the pace.

"Asshole," Michael says, finally, "go faster, Ryan, motherfucker," and Ryan goes slower, if possible, big hands settling on Michael's hips and ass and holding him there so Ryan can pull out like he's got all the time in the world, so slow Michael is sweating and twisting with it, and then slam home with a roll of his hips that sends Michael's face into the covers, a clenching ache up his spine.

"Ryan," he says, "fuck, Ryan," and his tongue is hot and fumbling in his mouth, Ryan's hands tight enough to leave bruises, searing. 

"Just like that, Mike, you take it so good," Ryan says, cheesy porn dialogue that only comes out when he's inside Michael, and Michael laughs at it every time, but it doesn't stop Ryan from saying it and it doesn't stop the spike of heat that crawls up his spine when he hears it.

"You're ridiculous," Michael tries to say, but Ryan thrusts in again as he's opening his mouth and the second word comes out as a mangled groan, a whine, and Michael feels Ryan spread a big hand up his spine, settle it possessively over the dip between Michael's shoulder blades. 

"Gonna ask again, Mike?" Ryan asks, voice rough, "gonna beg me to fuck you faster? You need it?" and Michael opens his mouth to laugh but what comes out is a traitorous, "fine— _fuck_ , Ryan, _please_ —" 

"Knew it," says Ryan, like a smug asshole, and his next thrust is slower still, and Michael shudders but gets out, "Not fair, Ryan, you dick— _ah_ "

"Jk, dude, hang on," says Ryan, and then the hand between Michael's shoulder blades presses him down harder, urging his upper body towards the bed. His other hand comes around, gathers Michael's arms and centers them at the small of his back, holds them there.

"You could have at least washed the sheets before you buried my face in them—" Michael gets out, and then the number of times they've skipped laundry day recently slips his mind entirely, because now Ryan's tugging his hips up with stupid efficiency and slamming in as fast as Michael had been trying not to beg for.

Michael says a lot of embarrassing things about how it feels, the hot, thick length of Ryan's dick working into him, relentlessly on target and so good he can feel his pulse pounding double-time in his ears, in his balls, but he says it mostly into the bed sheets and mostly in garbled profanities. He tries to give as good as he gets, though, pushing back into the slam of Ryan's hips the way that makes Ryan crazy, and in return he gets Ryan's triumphant laugh breaking on a sharp intake of breath, Ryan's fingers tightening like a vise around his wrists.

The first time Michael fucked Ryan, he'd gone crazy for it, so worked up that he came almost before Michael could really get a rhythm going, then got mostly hard again just in the time it took Michael to finish. 

"So this works, then," Michael had thought, and was half-relieved and half-disappointed to let that kind of be the basic template for how things went, until Ryan asked him one night why he was such a pussy about getting fucked and he said how come Ryan was too much of a pussy to try and fuck him. 

"I'm respecting your borders and shit," Ryan said, dead serious, and Michael thought, fuck it, who am I kidding, I want him every way possible, and said, "Fuck that, do it already."

Ryan was fumbling and eager and too gentle, and Michael spent a lot of time having an unexpected freakout about how much he was liking it, and in the end it was just awkward enough that Ryan made it his mission to practice, to beat Michael at this, too. 

And now, all these years later, it's— _unfair_ , Michael thinks, unfair that Ryan can just throw him down and pin him there and fuck him so good that he's trying to rub off against the sheets because he needs to come so badly and Ryan won't even let him touch himself. 

"Dick," Michael says, nonsensically, "my dick—your, Ryan, you dick—"

"Hang on," Ryan says, and his voice is labored now, "you, like, want that, we gotta do it my way," and then he's slowing again, sliding all the way out of Michael and just resting there, and Michael can hear himself whine, humiliatingly, in frustration.

"C'mere," Ryan says, and releasing Michael's wrists and tugging his shoulders up. Michael goes with it, rising to his knees and then settling back against Ryan's chest as Ryan pulls him in.

Ryan nudges his thighs apart and fits himself back in, too slow again, and Michael leans back and works himself down on Ryan's big thighs and big dick and shit, this is good. 

It's even better when Ryan twists their right hands together and brings them to Michael’s mouth, nudges until Michael opens to suck messily at the intertwined fingers. 

"Youuuu," Ryan warbles, trying to annoy Michael even now, but it comes out serious, low and dirty and urgent. Ryan mouths at Michael's jaw as he pulls their hands away, finds his lips and stays there. His mouth is hot and a little dry and Michael turns his head as far as he can to get more of it, a little more urgent once Ryan guides their locked hands to Michael's dick.

He lets go, then, and Michael gets a desperate hand around himself while Ryan trails down to play with his balls, tugging lightly and biting at Michael's neck every time he gasps. Ryan's thrusts are jerkier now, and his breath is labored in Michael's ear, and Michael fists himself and pitches his head forward, gasping, coming as Ryan grinds into him.

"Admit it," Ryan says and he pulls out and lets Michael collapse forward onto the sheets, "I fucking wrote the textbook, man."

"Fuck, Ryan, gimme a second," Michael tries. He feels shaky and hot and still kind of out of it in that too-good way. The sound of Ryan jerking himself off comes to him like it's happening somewhere far away rather than right over his ass.

"Say it," says Ryan, breathless, "c'mon."

"It's sad that you get off on this," Michael says, and then he feels hands on his ass and Ryan pushing back into him, hard and fast and amplified painfully across all his fucked-out nerves. 

"Fuck," he says, "shit, god, Ryan, fine, _fuck_ , you wrote whatever the fuck you want, god—" and then Ryan pulls out again and Michael's too gone to feel the jizz landing on his ass but he feels Ryan's hands spreading through it a few seconds later, because sex with Ryan always has to be as gratuitously messy as possible. 

Ryan falls asleep like that, one hand still spread across Michael's ass like he's admiring his work or some shit, and Michael lies there and thinks about how they really, really need to change the sheets tomorrow, and if maybe Ryan's hand will get glued there overnight and how hilarious and disgusting that would be, and how he needs to put pickles on the grocery list and find a way to get Cash to clean up the living room before he goes to bed from now on. 

He’s just drifting off when Ryan mumbles something sleepily in his ear. “Whas?” says Michael, coherently, and Ryan tries again.

“We’’ll get’m book,” he says, “kid likes to read, weirdo,” and it’s a good idea. 

_Thirteen years ago,_ Michael thinks, _we’d be in the middle of round two right now, and now we lie here and think about fucking glue sticks and ninth grade mandatory sex ed, and shit, I’m old._

But Ryan—who’s snoring in his ear, now, happily asleep after solving the parenting crisis of the day, the familiar noise making Michael feel heavy and warm—has also in fact kind of sex-glued his hand to Michael’s ass, Michael is rapidly realizing, so maybe Michael shouldn’t be so hard on himself. Plus—it’s not like he’d trade those thirteen fucking years for anything, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Started from the Bottom," Drake. Of course! Other lyrics considered: "We don't like to do too much explaining."


End file.
